I tried this option once, and I doubt I will ever return. You don’t have to complete the game to unlock Battle Mode, in which you can fight your friends, but this isn’t Street Fighter. Boss Rush pits your single life against a gauntlet of bosses. There’s the self-explanatory Stage Select option, and Arcade Mode challenges you to complete the entire game with a single credit. The game includes a handful of modes that don’t unlock until you complete the campaign, but that campaign remains the heart and soul of the game. This is a game for basements that stink of soda and stale chips it’s built for distracted players who need something to do with their hands while they gab with friends on Discord. Streets of Rage 4 isn’t a competitive mental acuity test, nor should it be. Like Final Fight or Castle Crashers, this is an experience that comes to life when you play with your friends, using the somewhat mindless action on the screen as an excuse to hang out and talk. You can play alone, but c’mon, you deserve better. The game takes skill, in other words, but it’s light on strategy.

Image: Lizardcube, Guard Crush Games, Dotemu/Dotemu But most enemies are little more than punching bags with knives taped to their side.

The final boss fight is hilariously complex and annoyingly difficult, designed like a classic arcade boss meant to fleece you out of every quarter in your pocket. Endgame minibosses have Punch-Out!!-style tells, cueing you to move out of the way or rush in with an uppercut to the jaw. Kickboxers block attacks, so you must grapple them - accomplished by literally walking into them. Some enemies require a little bit more strategy than others. There’s no button to guard yourself from attacks, so a good defense is moving up and down the screen to avoid getting kicked in the throat, while conserving health power-ups for the moment your health bar is nearly (but not fully!) depleted. The combat has been improved a bit from the 16-bit era, but this is still a game in which you’ll spend most of the time bashing the same attack button, occasionally tapping the jump button to evade an attack, dealing a special move that can cost some of your own life, or unleashing a limited ultra move that slaughters any weak enemies standing in its way. There’s enough neon to melt your eyeballs

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